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Italy Itinerary Help

I am currently trying (and mostly succeeding?) to plan a trip for next summer with my mother to Italy. Unfortunately, I think I'm getting a little too ambitious, and after using this site for more of my questions thus far and getting some fairly solid answers, I thought, why not?

We have about 12.5 days on the ground with the flights that I've arranged. We'll land on day 1 around 10am, which is as early as I could possibly made it and we both plan on sleeping on the plane to hit the ground running as it were. So far I've got the following, but we're very open to suggestions:

Day 1: Land in Venice by 11am. Spend the evening exploring and do the tourist thing and take a gondola ride, because my mother would die if she didn't get to.

Day 2: Doge's Palace. St. Mark's. And we found a cool mask making tour through Dark Rome. I'm not sure if its going to be worth it or not, but the memories of making our own masks I think will be sort of cool.

Day 3: Murano and Burano. We're thinking of spending the evening on Lido, as we've heard that its sort of the beachy nightlife sort of thing .

Day 4: Early train to Lucca. Neither of us are huge into museums, and we feel we'll get enough of it in Venice and Rome, but we have heard great things about the walled city. We plan to spend the day and night in Lucca.

Day 5: Morning in Lucca and a train to Pisa, as my mother feels that she simply cannot leave Italy without seeing the leaning tower.

Day 6: Train to Rome. We plan on hitting the Pantheon, Trevi and other quick little things in the evening.

Day 7: We're really just exploring Rome on this day. I don't want to plan everything so much that we don't spend time just getting lost.

Day 8: Vatican City. I've got my eye on a Vatican City tour through Dark Rome that seems to be rather interesting with some behind the scenes type things. You'll find that I have taken to doing tours of things, as we're both not really great with italian.

Day 9: Ancient Rome: Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and the Roman Forum in the morning with a Crypts and Catacombs tour in the afternoon.

Day 10: The morning we're exploring again on our own, and in the afternoon we're taking a group tour to Trivoli, Villa D'Este and Hadrian's Villa.

Day 11: Day trip to Pompeii and Vesuvius.

Day 12: Here's where we're sort of hemming and hawing. We don't really aren't interested in spending a lot of time in Naples or Sorrento, but we do want to see Pompeii and Capri. There are day tours to Pompeii that seem not too rushed from Rome, but the Capri tours seem a bit too quick for us. We've sort of settled on spending a night on Capri. Thoughts on this?

Day 11: Most of the day on Capri.

Day 12: Hydrofoil/train back to Rome, as we're sort of set on flying out of Rome, as it is significantly cheaper than Naples.

We have one extra day that we can add, if people think we ought. Initially we were planning on getting back a day in advance and just spending a day at home being couch potatoes, but we're both sort of decided that we'd be willing to sacrifice our sleepiness for an extra day if needed. I've considered adding it to Venice, as it seems like we're a bit rushed there, but people I've talked to either say, "two days is enough" or "two years wouldn't be enough" so this is a bit confusing haha. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

>>>but the memories of making our own masks I think will be sort of cool.<<<

Do they ship these or do you have to carry them around the rest of trip?

I'm not a fan of Lucca and would pick a better small town if you want a small town experience. If Lucca, I think after you check in you should hop a train to Pisa (about 25 minutes) and visit that day as much closes down in Lucca in the afternoon. It will also save you the hassle of dragging your luggage, storing it in Pisa, etc. You can spend the next morning in Lucca before taking a bus or train back to Florence and heading south (faster than from Pisa).

I would go to Amalfi area before Rome if you are flying home from Rome. Tours to Pompeii from Rome usually just include 2 hours in Pompeii. Most take you to coral shops, etc.

I'm not sure a night on Capri is worth it.

>>>Day 12: Hydrofoil/train back to Rome, as we're sort of set on flying out of Rome, as it is significantly cheaper than Naples.<<<

I would be very surprised if that is the case. Since flight prices for next summer aren't available yet, I can't see how you could determine this yet. Checking some dates this summer for my area the prices are:

Not sure when you flight leaves Rome - but I think you have to be there the night before. And you need to know that the ferries to Capri (from Sorrento or Naples or?) have limited schedules. They don;t run after late afternoon - so to see Capri you need to leave by no late than 5 pm (at least when I was there).

If you can get an extra day I would put it in Sorrento so you can see a little of the Amalfi coast.

Lucca - two nights here - one night after arriving from Venice, then do Pisa as a daytrip, spend second night in Lucca. I guess some folks on the board don't like it but I thought it was pretty neat. Besides walking or biking the walls there are a few other sights and plenty of lovely outdoor restaurants.

Then go down to Sorrento - do daytrips to Pompeii and Capri from there (one day each). I think doing either as a daytrip from Rome is just too time consuming. So spend 3 nights in Sorrento - I do love to overnight on Capri but not sure I'd do it for one night. (My travel style is usually at least 3 nights in a place - don't like packing and dragging my bags!).

Finish and fly home from Rome. I wanted to fly from the US to Naples one year (because I was headed to Capri) and it wasn't very convenient - it may be that I wanted to work with the SkyTeam Alliance but it did turn out to be cheaper to switch planes in CDG and land in Rome, than to go CDG to Naples.